This invention relates to a lighting protection device for an antenna receiver in an aircraft and aircraft comprising same. This invention applies particularly to airplanes of which the fuselage contains electrically insulating materials, in particular composite materials.
Numerous antennas are installed on the fuselage of an aircraft. However, the widespread use of composite materials in the design of fuselages gives rise to numerous difficulties with relation to electrical conduction. In particular, significant contact resistance is present between the metallic bases of an antenna which is fixed to a fuselage and the composite panel onto which this base is fixed. The order of magnitude of this resistance is in the tens of Mega-Ohms. This high level of resistance causes current to circulate on the coaxial cable connected to the antenna when lightning strikes, on the order of 15 KA for a lightning strike of 200 KA, which is too restrictive for the connectors.
One solution under consideration is to connect the base of each antenna to metallic parts of nearby frames using metallic strips. This limits the amount of current shunted by the coaxial to 3 KA. However, this solution presents drawbacks, notably:                There are installation constraints.        It requires that the frames be metal plated, whereas it was determined that in some parts of aircraft carrying antennas that there should be no metal, which necessitates installing rather long strip lengths to reach other locations to which the metallic connection may be made.        